I am in Quebec Canada, i can find matches either in afternoon or evenings. It usually take 2-3 mins to load the first match but after that it seem to roll faster.

I would recommand to play in the evening in your region, you will have better chances. But ill admit those modes may very well not be popular in Germany and Australia. I am "lucky" cause where i live i am matched with the US east population... so its a pretty big pool of players.

I rarely could find a match. Mostly I tried to find a match, it's over 1 hour but still no luck, that's ridiculous. Problem started when they cancelled the region selection and let the game search by itself.

I live in New Zealand - i've ranked up to 100 on social only and have never played a single competitive match on Gears 4. I actually just thought it didnt work or something until i read this thread. Turns out I'm just the loneliest gears vet in the world or something.

But when you can be waiting for up to 40 minutes, only for the timer to reset because someone backs out, it is absolute bullshit and asking for any type of assistance from the developers during a livestream will get you nothing because they are all hard at work on making Gears 5 the best experience. Pretty sure they said the same thing about Gears of War 4.

The current Ranked Season will continue through to January 2020. In January 2020, with the vast majority of the game’s population moving to Gears 5, we will be removing all aspects of Ranked play from Gears 4.

In its place will be a new series of playlists across Core and Competitive. These playlists will have relaxed latency and skill rating rules for matchmaking to make finding matches easier in a significantly reduced population. With Ranking removed, all quit penalties will be disabled.